Development from conception to five years of age can determine later life outcomes ranging from educational achievement, labor market success, to risky and delinquent behaviors. Crises can cause nutritional deprivation which can negatively affect physiological and neurological development during...

This note assesses the main micro?determinants of informal employment in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region from a human development stand point. It's main purpose is to quantify the patterns of labor informality (defined as the share of all employment with no access to social...

The report lays out options to use social safety nets to meet the goal set by the Government of Botswana to eradicate extreme poverty by 2016 and in a budget neutral way. Introducing a Family Support Grant is argued to be a more efficient way to address absolute poverty by offering a family...

Together with reductions in indirect taxes on food imports, cash for work programs were one of the main responses implemented by African governments following the food, fuel, and financial crisis of recent years. The main objective of those programs was to help the poor cope with the various...

The World Bank Group Corporate Scorecard is designed to provide a high-level and strategic overview of the World Bank Group s performance toward achieving the two goals. It is the apex from which indicators cascade into the monitoring frameworks of the three World Bank Group institutions. The...

The World Bank Group will focus its financial and technical resources to ending extreme poverty and promoting shared prosperity in a sustainable manner, especially in fragile states, Sub-Saharan Africa, and South Asia. To this end, it is pulling its specialized agencies (IBRD, IDA, IFC, MIGA) to...

Paying Taxes 2014 looks at tax regimes in 189 economies as part of the Doing Business series. The period covered by the study, 2004 to 2012, has seen the end of a sustained period of economic growth, a severe recession and a slow recovery. Governments continue to be under the pressure balance...

The report is organized as follows. Chapter one sets out the strategic context for Iraq, including the evolving political situation, macroeconomic context, and poverty and social conditions. Chapter two analyzes the trends in, and composition of, public expenditure, both from economic and...